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Tale of the Tape

College Football Week 12: #14 Stanford At #1 Oregon

Stanford

Oregon

Coaching

Stanford’s big win last week kept its conference title hopes alive, but it must win at Oregon first. David Shaw knows the task ahead of him is extremely difficult.

Chip Kelly’s team is No. 1 in the country but is dealing with a ton of injuries. His team continues to roll along, but must beat three ranked teams to reach to the national championship.

Offense

Kevin Hogan has Stanford’s offense looking a lot better—he accounted for 300 yards of offense and three touchdowns. The national significance of this game will be a huge test for the freshman.

How do you want to measure Oregon’s offense this week? How about by the most important stat: points per game. The Ducks average 54 points, best in the country.

Defense

Stanford is a top-10 defense as far as yards per play. Oregon, of course, presents a whole different challenge. The Ducks have scored more than 100 combined points against Stanford the last two years.

Oregon’s injuries on defense have become almost comical. Kelly doesn’t talk about injuries, but his defensive line and his secondary have been hit hard. The depth will really be tested in the coming weeks.

Special Teams

Stanford ranks 30th in Football Outsiders’ special teams ratings. They will probably need a big play or two in special teams to pull off the upset.

Oregon had made 5 of 9 field goals, a bad percentage but a small sample size. In other phases of special teams the Ducks have been very good.

RESULTS

Oregon

Yes, this is the best defense Oregon has faced so far this season. Yes, Oregon has a lot of injuries on defense. But if Stanford couldn’t hang with the Ducks when it had Andrew Luck, how much of a chance do they have without him?
-Andrew Kahn, College Football Contributor